Top Ten Reasons I Love Living With My Mother

1. Well, she's my mom.
2. I get weird living alone.
3. I actually cook things--whole meals--and I eat them.
4. I sit at the dining room table while eating the meals I cooked.
5. There's someone to talk to while I sit at the dining room table eating the meals I cooked.
6. It's fun to have another bird nerd in the house. (We will both get up from the table if a blue heron comes in for a landing.)
7. I never have to do the dishes.
8. Due to my new motto, "There ought to be one sober person in the house," I'm hardly drinking at all.
9. She has cookies hidden in her bedroom.
10. Since I can't really go anywhere, my writing life has revved up.

I've been writing a novel for a while. The first 150-some pages were my MFA thesis. I was, at that time, in the absolute worst physical-mental-intellectual-psychological condition of my life due to my fucking hell-hole of a divorce. A few months back, I finally opened the  novel file on my computer and completed a first draft. Today chapters 4 and 5 traded places. Then chapters 3 and 4 traded places. New scenes were added to all of the above. Chapter 7 ate chapter 6. I think I  have 55 much-improved pages.

Thanks, Mom
Here's a fuzzy photo of me and my diploma.